I strive to generate the optimum conditions for developing and deepening collaborative artistic projects. My commitment to working at the intersection of humanitarianism and performance has resulted in interdisciplinary creative partnerships with dancers, visual artists, hair braiders, refugees, and domestic workers, among many others.
Shariffa Ali is a multidisciplinary creative leader working across theater, film, dance, and virtual reality, advancing radical change through art and activism. Born in Kenya, raised in South Africa, and based in New York, Shariffa has explored Black and African American identities in much of her work, which ranges from VR films to theatrical stage productions.
Her films and VR works have been featured at acclaimed festivals and institutions, such as the Sundance Film Festival, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, Brooklyn Film Festival, Pan African Film Festival, Electric Africa and DOK Neuland. In 2018, she won a New Frontier Story Lab Fellowship from the Sundance Institute. “Atomu” (2020), a VR short film that brings to life a Kenyan tribal myth, received a POV/PBS Spark Grant.
For her work in theater, Shariffa has been recognized with a National Theatre Fellowship and the Hermitage Major Theater Award. Recent directing credits include “Sweet Chariot” (The Public Theater), “Mies Julie” (Classic Stage Company), “School Girls; or The African Mean Girls Play” (Pittsburgh Public Theater), “The Copper Children,” (Oregon Shakespeare Festival) and “Mlima’s Tale” (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis).
A Lecturer in the Program in Theater at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, Shariffa teaches introductory courses and special topics such as “Illegal Gatherings Act—South African Protest Theatre” and “Afronaut Ascension: A Creative Exploration of Afrofuturism & the Avant-Garde.” She also serves as an arts administrator at The Public Theater and The New Group, a member of the interdisciplinary artists’ collective Black History Museum, and on the advisory committee of Africa’s Out!, a nonprofit founded by artist and activist Wangechi Mutu.
